Anne Reid

Daniel Craig

Peter Vaughan

Steven Mackintosh

Cathryn Bradshaw

Anna Wilson-Jones

Danira Gović

Izabella Telezynska

Oliver Ford Davies

Jonah Coombes

Roger Michell

Jeremy Sams

Alistair Hopkins

Tracey Scoffield

Angus Finney

Konnie Daniel

Mary Selway

Fiona Weir

Natalie Ward

Kevin Loader

Mark Digby

Rosa Romero

Mark Tildesley

Stephen Evans

David M. Thompson

Michelle Day

Hanif Kureishi

Alwin H. Küchler

Nicolas Gaster

Olly Tellett

Drama

Romance

The Mother

BBC Film

Free Range Films

Renaissance Films

United Kingdom

CinemaSerf

This is quite a tough film to watch. Not so much because of the subject matter, but because you just know there is an inevitability about the conclusion which is going to leave everyone damaged! Anne Reid is good as the eponymous character ("Mary") who loses her husband and finds that she just cannot go home. She spends her time between her son and his family and with her daughter and her young son. The former is having his house extended, and so has employed "Darren" (Daniel Craig) - who just happens to be the married boyfriend of her daughter "Paula" (Cathryn Bradshaw). Lonely and craving human companionship, "Mary" gradually becomes infatuated with this hunky tradesman, despite him being half her age, and he is all too willing to help her out. Obviously, her family find out and that's when it all goes awry. It's also when the plot heads full speed into melodrama. This already pretty dysfunctional family sees the wheels come off and the nuanced, emotional and sensitive elements are jettisoned for anger and an sense of the truly unpleasant and course develops. Reid and Craig have a couple of decent scenes together, but for the most part the remaining cast are all pretty lacklustre and the longer it goes on, the more desperate it seems to shock - for the sake of it. The age-gap relationship/sex storyline could have delivered something more here had director Roger Michell not just chickened out.

English

UK Trailer